No Rest for the Weary
by BalrogsBreath
Summary: WIP : Exhausted after countless time shifts, Doug and Tony wind up back on Hawaii... in the year 2081.


_A/N: This was the show I got up to watch at six in the morning before I caught the bus during my middle school years. This was the show that got me hooked on SciFi. After re-discovering it on Hulu I was sourly disappointed to find only four fanfics on . How awful! So, I'll be doing my devilish duties and adding to this fandom._

_I'd love to get a review or two, but I sadly understand that this category isn't exactly a hot spot. _

_Thanks for reading!_

* * *

No Rest for the Weary

* * *

Tony let himself slide to the ground and came to rest atop a confusingly comfortable boulder. He was tired. Beyond tired. So exhausted that his vision had narrowed and he would have jumped with surprise when he felt Doug's hand on his shoulder but for his fatigue.

"Doug," he said, and his weariness showed. "I need a rest, I can't go any farther."

The older scientist nodded his head, feeling much the same, and plopped down next to his friend. "I know. The tunnel has been shifting us from hot spot to hot spot and there hasn't been enough time to even get a bite to eat, let alone get some sleep."

"I know they can't help where, I mean… when, we're being sent, but I would give just about anything for a bed right now."

"You and me both, Tony. You and me both."

The two men, after narrowly escaping from their latest adventure with the aid of the time tunnel, had been tossed once again into the vortex and then violently deposited onto a volcanic beach. It left both men with a new assemblage of bruises to add to their growing collection of pains.

"Where do you think we are? An island?" Doug's voice was just as haggard as Tony knew his own to be but the knowledge that both of them were reaching the end of their fuses didn't comfort him any.

Tony raised his head up slowly and looked around them. Jungle braced them on one side and the sheer side of a cliff loomed above them on the other. In front of them was a deep green sea with foaming waves and a variety of ocean going birds. It seemed peaceful enough, but both men knew by now to assume nothing and to always be ready for anything.

"Looks like it, alright. No idea where or when, though."

Not that that was anything new, Tony thought discouragingly.

"Let's rest a bit and then we'll look for some shelter. If we're lucky, we'll find some food."

They'd only meant to close their eyes for a few minutes, to simply catch their breath before continuing their adventure. But, when Doug managed to pry his lids open and rub the sleep and sand out of them the beach had gone dark and there was nothing to be seen but for the thousand points of light above them and a half dozen glow bugs.

"Tony!"

Doug scrambled to his feet, ashamed that he'd let them loose their daylight, and nearly tripped over Tony's supine form. He reached down and gave the green clad shoulder a shake and then felt overly relived when Tony sat up with a start. They had been in the tunnel too long. It had turned them into soldiers.

"What happened?" Disoriented and still half asleep, it was the first thing that flew out of Tony's mouth.

"Nothing, we fell asleep. We must have been out for hours." Doug helped the younger scientist to his feet. "It looks close to midnight."

Tony nodded his head. "There's no use going anywhere, we'd just end up lost. We'll have to stay on the beach until morning."

Doug looked thoughtful. "Yes, that's what I was thinking too."

"Do you think- Uff!"

What ever Tony had been about to ask, it was abruptly cut short as something catapulted into his back and sent him sprawling face first into the sand.

"Tony!"

Without pausing to figure out who or what was attacking his friend, Doug leapt at the dark form that had appeared out of nowhere. The thing was small but was not willing to be taken down without a fight. By the time Doug had his hands around its body, Tony had gotten back on is feet and was headed their way.

"Freeze!"

The dark little figure stepped out of the shadows slowly, still only barely visible in the starlight. What was very visible was the glittering pistol held steady in his hands and aimed directly at Doug's head.

The time travelers skittered to a halt. Too many times guns had been pointed at them and they knew better than to doubt the steadiness or willingness of any attacker.

"Show me your hands and then take out your wallets slowly."

It was almost like dejav u to Doug, who put on his best sympathetic smile. "I'm afraid we can't do that. Neither of us have any money."

"Shut up!" The little pistol, which was of a variety that neither man recognized, glittered ominously in the dark and both Tony and Doug stilled. "Gimmy your ident card, then!"

"Ident card?" Tony spoke up as he inched closer to Doug. The two men shared a look.

"We don't have any ident cards either. Look, I'm sorry, but-"

"How dumb do you think I am? Shut up! Everybody's got an ident card. It's the only way to get in and out of this hellhole. Now hand 'em over!"

Tony and Doug looked at each other helplessly. "Look, you can search us if you want to," Doug started again, "but we don't have anything. We don't even know where we are."

The gun wielder broke into a laugh and the traveler's noticed for the first time how young he sounded.

"That's rich, that is. Don't know where you are… You're on the great and bountiful island of Hawaii," he spat the words like they were poison, "you ought to feel _privileged_ to be here."

"Hawaii…" Tony knew Hawaii, had grown up on the island after his mother had died. This place seemed about right, the temperature and the climate matched, at least.

"Hawaii. And you can't ever leave, not without a proper ident card issued by the forgiving and merciful Republic of Canada."

"Canada!"

The gun twitched. "Story time's over, now shut up and empty your pockets."

The two men did so, nervously turning their empty pockets inside out revealing nothing but an old dime.

"Toss that here."

Doug threw the coin at the man whose empty hand snaked out and caught it. The gun never wavored. "In God We Trust," he read slowly, "1952." There was a pause. "You two are complete idiots. I almost believed that you had no money on you, too. You really almost had me. This thing," he waved it in front of them and stepped out of the shadows a bit more, "has got to be worth a small fortune!"

Tony stared at their attacker. He was small, no more than a child, dressed in what looked like some sort of government issued dress. Pants that were slightly too long, a shirt that was far too wide in the shoulders, all of a deep blue so dark it almost looked black. There was a clearly visible number printed on the breast pocket. 13,080.

"This is going to sound like a crazy question, son, but what year is it?" The attacker's face, though young, was as battle hardened as any he had seen before and a second too late Doug realized the error in his word choice.

"If you call me son again I will blast your face off, got it? I'm no kid and I don't make idle threats with loaded weapons."

Doug only nodded.

"It's 2081, dumb-nuts. I'd be doing you both a favor if I shot you dead right here and now. There's no way in hell that you'll survive this place. No ident means that the government doesn't recognize you and since you were dumb enough to get caught by me… you're free game in this place, and trust me, it's hunting season. At least I'll do you quick, which is the nicest thing you'll find here."

That said, the young attacker raised the gun up higher and casually squeezed his trigger finger.

"No!"

* * *

"No!" Dr. Ann MacGregor couldn't help the shout as she watched the two men she had come to care about cringe under the small gun, helpless, confused, and exhausted.

"Ann!" Dr. Ray Swain, fighting with the countless knobs and dials under his hands, called his colleague back to the present, quite literally. "I'm loosing them, do we have a fix?"

General Kirk, standing with white knuckles, stared at the now wavering visual link of his two time-trapped scientists. "Do we have enough power for a retrieval?"

"Not yet," Ann, adamantly keeping her eyes away from the screen, leapt up and ran to the side computer. "Well have full power in," she flipped a number of switches before calling over her shoulder, "nineteen hours."

"Nineteen hours!" Ray paled and looked hopelessly up at the display screen. "They won't live past nineteen seconds. We have to have _some_ power. What about a audio communication?"

Abruptly, the screen dissolved into a fit of static noise and garble and Tony and Doug disappeared.

"No! We've lost them." The methodical and quick hands of the two main scientists couldn't win over the machine in front of them and they watched as the static screen itself vanished, leaving the tunnel crew looking at thin air.

"They're gone."

Ann had never sounded quite so distraught and the General wondered what this job had done to her. Or to Tony and Doug, for that matter. "Can we get them back?"

It was Ray who answered, unflappable man that he was, "Not right away. The fix was bad to begin with. But, we have a general location and time for them, which is a lot more to work off then we've had in the past."

"Hawaii, 2081." Ann said, gathering herself together, her fear for the two time travelers being tucked under layer after layer of brilliant scientist.

"It's hard to believe that America will have lost Hawaii to the Canadians of all people," The General resumed his post behind the two scientists and folded his arms. I wonder what happened."

"That's assuming there _is_ an America in 2081, of course," Ray interjected.

"Great lord, I hadn't even thought of that. In a little over a hundred years…I find it hard to believe." He paused. "But then again, we're operating a Time Tunnel and have personally been visited by aliens. Perhaps nothing is unbelievable any more." The General shook himself out of his thoughts. "Have you been able to get a fix on them yet?"

"We're getting it now, General!"

The image shivered back to life in front of the tunnel revealing Tony and Doug as they had been before, at gunpoint by the young man.

Ann took a deep breath and Ray said a silent and secret prayer.

The General simply barked: "Get me audio!" and Jiggs, ever present and helpful, appeared a split second later holding the radio transmitter.

Ray jammed it into the socket quickly and with another twist of a knob said, "It's ready!"

The General snatched up the transmitter and quickly depressed the button. "This is the government," he said in his most authoritative voice, "put down the weapon and back away!"

The tunnel team watched with morbid fascination as the gun wielder of the future reacted to what was to him a voice echoing one hundred and thirteen years from the past. The boy's eyes roamed frantically about him, but kept the gun pinned at Doug's head. The General inwardly cringed. It seemed that the boy wasn't a complete amateur.

"We know who you are," he lied, "put down the weapon." Only the fact that his fingers were trembling betrayed the fact that the military man was anything but casual.

The last statement seemed to have done the trick and the aggressor whipped up the gun and shot off a round into the night sky before turning and darting into the shadows and the jungle. Or, rather, a 'round' was the only word the General knew to describe what the weapon had fired. It was more like a flashlight than a bullet but it had the same sound as a cannon and left a trail of smoke and ash in it's path which gently drifted down to the sand at the Time Travelers feet.

"It worked!" Ann and Ray, giddily relieved, clutched at each other in happiness and the General patted them both on the shoulder.

"Nice work," he told them, and their pale faces told them that Tony and Doug weren't the only ones in need of a little rest. "I'm ending this shift early," he declared to them, "I want you both to go home and get some rest. Jerry and Jiggs can look after things for a few hours and I need both of you to be in your top form for when we get full power and can attempt a retrieval."

The two scientists opened their mouths simultaneously to argue, but General Kirk beat them to the punch. "No arguments! You yourself said, Ann, that we won't be able to do anything more until the power supply replenishes itself and that isn't for another nineteen hours. I won't have my two most valuable scientists exhaust themselves for no reason. Go and rest!"

Grudgingly, they stood up, accepting his orders. Ann, more stubborn than Ray (though only by a bit) jutted her chin and looked him in the eye. "Only if you promise to get some sleep too, General. It isn't just Ray and I who are in danger of exhaustion."

The General nodded with a smile. "Thank you, Ann. Yes, I think I'll be getting some rest too. With any luck, Tony and Doug will get a reprieve of their own."

With one last look around the room and a nod at Jiggs and Jerry, the General walked out of the room with a great deal more confidence than he actually felt. Hawaii, 2081. Praying harder than he'd prayed in a good long while to a god he was no longer sure existed, the General begged for his two Time Travelers to sill be alive when he got back.

_tbc_


End file.
